


Saudade

by Bleed_Peroxide



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 00:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17929535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bleed_Peroxide/pseuds/Bleed_Peroxide
Summary: He had sat there in the moments before the funeral, desperately hoping that Eiji wouldn’t cry, or would at least be quiet about it. Sing knew the second he heard Eiji crying, he’d probably be right there next there next to him, wailing like the fucking child he was.He hadn’t realized how much worse it would be to see Eiji as he was now, adrift and numb as a man who’d lost half of his soul.It was up to him to deal with the aftermath.





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GracefulNanami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GracefulNanami/gifts).



> Becca is my Reddit Refugee, and I adore her dearly. So when she requested me to write something, I wanted to really, really dig into Eiji's grief and depression, both of which are topics we explored quite a bit. The prompt was: "Sing having to inform Eiji about Ash's death. Angst, comfort, anything goes."
> 
> Hopefully this satisfies! :)

Sing’s arm was littered in crescent-shaped indents, yet still, he felt himself pinching the skin as though hoping it wouldn’t sting this time.    

If he didn’t feel pain, then he could finally tell himself that this wasn’t real - that the… the _body_ in front of him wasn’t real.    

Sing could pretend that the golden hair spilled across a primly starched cloth belonged to someone else, or pretend that his heart didn’t clench in his chest upon the realization that Ash had freckles across the bridge of his nose. There was something ineffably childish about such a small thing, that someone like the great  Ash Lynx could freckle in the sun, just like any other boy.     

Another pinch on his arm, a by-now familiar sting.  

He fought the burning in his eyes, swallowed around the lump in his throat.  

_I refuse to believe that’s him._  

But there was a smile on those pale lips that, perhaps more than anything, gave Sing pause. It was the cryptic smile of a French girl in a river even as she courted death like a lover. He was Manhattan’s own  _L'Inconnue de la Seine,_ smiling so serenely even as the blood had slowly pooled around his ankles. If he hadn’t felt like cool marble to the touch, he could almost believe Ash was merely sleeping. 

Sing understood, now, why men had immortalized her face, why she held such a fascination for people even after she had died.  How must it have felt hearing the Reaper’s scythe drag across the floor in that quiet library? How had he felt as cold settled into his bones, the deathly chill of a mausoleum trespassing into warm human flesh?  

The peace in his features made Sing believe without a doubt that he’d passed the threshold of the living willingly. Ash was no longer a snarling lynx but a blushing bride carried in the arms of a husband, and in Sing’s mind, he couldn’t help imagine Ash as that resplendent vision that had captured his interest in that burning mansion so long ago. 

He’d seen the letter. Eiji’s careful handwriting speckled with blood and tears.  He’d seen the way Ash had centered his whole being around it, how he’d rested his cheek against the paper as if hoping to capture some of Eiji’s warmth through the script.  

Before he realized he was doing it, Sing ran a hand lightly along the skin of Ash’s cheek, memorizing it before the man was buried six feet below. He should have felt embarrassed at such a tender display, but as he felt a rogue tear escape despite his best efforts... well. It was the least he could do, a token gesture of comfort to someone that deserved far more kindness than he’d been given.  

In his mind’s eye, that smile twisted into something more familiar - edged with mischief, as though swearing him to secrecy. Ash’s voice was fresh in his memory. He felt if he strained his ears enough, that soft tenor would still taunt him in a curiously venom-less way.  

_You poor, sad boy - you’re still too soft for this world. Get out while you still can. People like you, like Eiji, still have a chance to pull yourselves from the gutter._  

That sadness shifted into something sicker, blacker, as realization sunk into his gut.  

A honeyed lie in the airport, the look of hope as Eiji left while his beloved lay bleeding in a library only minutes away.  

Someone would have to tell Eiji.

* * *

Sing tried to ignore the nausea strangling him and instead focused on feigning the steady rhythm of calm breaths. He felt like speaking would make vomit and grief pour out of him, that he wouldn’t be able to stop once he started.  

But Eiji remained patiently quiet,  voice occasionally lapsing into soft Japanese as he spoke to some unseen presence on the other line.  He could only assume it was some kind of pet, given the cloyingly sweet way he spoke. 

“Eiji,” he began, speaking around the frog in his throat. “Something… happened. Something bad, really bad. I… I don’t know how to tell you this, but-”  

“I already know it is Ash. Just tell me simply.” To think that Eiji has borne bad news about Ash so frequently that he could anticipate it so calmly. Not for the first time, Sing marveled at how much he had underestimated Eiji during those first few awkward months they’d spent together.  

“Lao didn’t know that Ash and I had called off our fight. He…. attacked Ash and-” 

Sing stopped himself.  

He had ventured dangerously close to revealing what Ash had held in his hands. Cruel as it was, that simple piece of paper had been how Lao had managed to poach a lynx that more dangerous men like Foxx had been unable to conquer. Eiji had consumed his thoughts, cradling him in gentle words even as he blocked Ash’s eyesight with his own visions of the future. 

“And what, Sing?” Eiji prompted. Sing heard how bravely Eiji tried to steel himself against his next words - that voice, usually warm like honey, was remarkably cold.  

It was better to kill a rabbit with one quick slice to the neck, Sing reasoned, than let the creature suffer. It was kinder than death of a thousand paper cuts.  

There _was_ no gentle way to tell him. 

“He _died_ , Eiji. Lao stabbed him. Ash didn’t make it.” 

"That’s a lie.” An immediate denial, delivered with the assurance of one that’s seen such a man escape death before.  

“It’s the truth,” Sing continued, fighting to keep the tremble out of his voice. “Time of death is estimated to be roughly 5:42 pm. Cause of death: exsanguination via abdominal vascular injury, caused by sharp force trauma.”

“He has survived such wounds before.”  

A choked sob escaped Sing despite his best efforts. How cruel did Eiji need him to be? 

“Goddamit, Eiji, this is hard enough as it is. I touched his co-cor… I saw him in the morgue, Eiji. He has a bunch of weird black marks on the web of his thumb that nobody could explain. He and Shorter both had ‘em, and I-” 

“Ah, so you saw his ‘prison tattoos’,” Eiji supplied, the accompanying laugh that followed so utterly hollow that Sing felt a shiver go down his spine. “Ash told me that he and Shorter did it in juvie. You use a pencil and poke, poke, poke. It is easy, though permanent.”  

A beat of silence followed, in which he could sense the shift in mood as reality started to set in. Sing waited for some kind of reaction - a sniffle, a wail, anything.  

Instead, he heard a soft voice that sounded almost robotic in its lack of inflection. It was the tremulous control of a man walking a high wire. Sing wished, more than anything, he could do more than wait to hear Eiji’s reaction - offer him an embrace, to hold his hand, something. This wasn’t news one deserved to hear from across the ocean.  

“I will be back within a day or two. Can you please have someone meet me at the airport since he-” 

A dangerous tremor.  

“Of course, Eiji.”

* * *

The funeral was a solemn affair.  

Sing tried to remove himself as much from the event as he could, biting his cheek raw as he reined tears he didn’t deserve to shed. His own brother was the reason all these people had gathered around a sleek wood casket, bowing their heads to place a kiss on the empty shell inside.  

Lazarus had already emerged from within the bowels of the psych ward before…. surely this tiny casket couldn’t contain him so easily. That someone that had blazed like the sun should burn out so quietly… it was blasphemous, it was unthinkable.  

And yet… 

Sing settled for keeping his hand in a fist, tight enough to sink his fingernails into the soft skin of his palm. _Good_ , he thought - if he focused on the pain in his hand, he could avoid feeling the gaping wound in his chest. 

What struck him the most was how quiet everyone was. Max, who Sing remembered as a rather boisterous man, sat near the periphery with tears running down his face.  He stared at the casket as though seeing Ash’s body through the wood grain, willing it to arise with a sheepish grin as everyone laughed at his joke. The man kept glancing at his phone, which brought out a watery smile before anguish twisted his features once more. As subtly as he could, Sing craned his neck to see what it was that could elicit such an emotion.  

Two cutlery emojis and a pig, with the simple text, “Congrats, dad!” 

Michael was far too young to use a cell phone. 

 

Blinking the moisture from his eyes, Sing averted his gaze. He felt as though he’d stumbled upon something far too intimate.  

He scanned the room, and easily found Eiji nestled within the front row of the crowd between Bones and Alex. Both of them had reddened eyes themselves, but in a display of discipline that Ash would have been proud of, they were the most composed of the group. The two seemed to be dividing their attention between the casket and the motionless boy between them, concern etched into their features. 

Eiji was not so much composed as simply…  _there_. He had yet to let out so much as a whimper, let alone cry. If it were not for the steady rise and fall of his chest, the occasional blink of his eyes, Sing would have wondered if they had a second corpse present in the room.  

The Japanese boy stared at the casket, but while Max’s gaze was that of a man entreating his god, Eiji looked as though his heart had ripped from his body.  

As Sing observed him carefully, he saw the way Eiji’s lips moved almost imperceptibly. It was a subtle motion, but god, Sing knew immediately what it was. He’d witnessed it countless times, the way only Eiji’s lightly accented voice changed Ash’s name into two syllables, could make them sound as sweet as a prayer. 

Sing marveled at his own stupidity.  

He had sat there in the moments before the funeral, desperately hoping that Eiji wouldn’t cry, or would at least be quiet about it. Sing knew the second he heard Eiji crying, he’d probably be right there next to him, wailing like the fucking child he was.  

He hadn’t realized how much worse it would be to see Eiji as he was now, adrift and numb as a man who’d lost half of his soul.

* * *

Time dragged on in the aftermath, sluggish as though he were dragging a ball and chain around his ankles. The specter of Ash’s death lingered in the air, and Sing often wondered if he was going insane. Was it wishful thinking that made him hear Ash’s laughter when he dropped a plate, the way the sunlight always seemed to capture Eiji’s profile just so?  

It made sense that Eiji had returned to the place where he and Ash had made themselves a home. But he confined himself to only that which he alone had touched - Ash’s bed remained just it had been, with a t-shirt tossed onto the end and the pillows bearing the ruffled indent of their prior occupant. Ash was never one to put a toothbrush in the assigned holder, which had been a source of frustration to Eiji in happier days. Perhaps that was why, every single time Sing went over, it remained in precisely the same spot,  daring Eiji to move it now.  

Eiji wandered around like the curator of a museum, the refined elegance of the posh Manhattan condo closer to the regal stillness of a pharaoh's tomb. He guarded these priceless artifacts with an inordinate care, as though removing these vestiges of Ash’s life was sacrilege. Even a half-scribbled note to grab milk from the store was a treasure, displayed on the fridge so that Eiji could feel as though Ash were speaking to him.  

Through it all,  Eiji’s face was a Noh mask, fixed with an unchanging smile that made Sing feel sick. He’d seen the cracks amidst the plaster - haphazard cuts along the Japanese boy’s arms, explained away with elusive answers and a polite tug of the sleeves to hide them again. He could see the miasma leaking out in the way Eiji’s sweaters grew larger as his wrists grew bonier, the shadows growing around his eyes from sleepless nights spent tossing and turning.  

When Eiji spoke in Japanese on the phone, his voice was saccharine, mouth smiling in a way that never quite reached his eyes. Sing knew a liar when he heard one - he often used the same sickly sweet tone himself when he called his own mother. The lies would flow easily, and so Sing would spin whimsical anecdotes about hanging out at the park as he quietly tied a piece of cloth around a bleeding wound. 

He could only imagine the sugar-coated lies Eiji was telling his family back home. How long before they asked after his blonde foreigner, immortalized in Eiji’s photographs with blatant longing?  

Eiji never screamed, never cried…  _nothing_. Sing had spent countless nights on the couch, making sure that he was the first and last thing Eiji saw, that he was never truly alone. He knew from experience that grief lent a particularly cruel flavor to solitude, which Eiji seemed to wrap himself in like a blanket.  

But Sing had dared to peek in a few times and found Eiji turned on his side, eyes fixed to the wall with a thousand-yard stare. His lips moved in a silent dialogue, sometimes for hours before he wore himself out. Not for the first time, Sing wondered if perhaps he wasn’t the only one comforted with the delusion that Ash’s ghost lingered.  

He took it upon himself to come to visit each day -  Sing wasn’t sure if it was purely to keep an eye on him, to atone for his own brother doing this, his own poor leadership…. if he thought on it too hard, the weight of his own guilt threatened to make his knees buckle. He settled instead for diverting his energies to Eiji: making sure that he always had a movie or video game to keep him distracted, and that he had fresh fruits and vegetables to eat.  

He had learned that when left to his own devices, Eiji simply would not eat. He based his purchases on which foods ran out quickly and which were left to rot in the fridge - he remembered the day he’d come over and found nothing but a can of Sprite and box of baking soda in the fridge. When he’d asked how long Eiji had been out of food, the Japanese boy had given him a wan smile and answered, “I’m not sure. Perhaps a week or two? I wasn't hungry anyway.”  

Unlike his other destructive behaviors, Sing knew his lack of appetite was emotional rather than disordered. Eiji attempted to eat, but his face quickly twisted with nausea if he tried to finish off the meals that Sing prepared for him.  Not sure what else to do, Sing started adding a bit more butter to his dishes, hoping the extra calories would halt the worrying prominence of Eiji’s clavicle. 

As though seeing right through these endeavors, Eiji’s lips curved into a polite smile. “Thank you, Sing,” he would respond, attempting to convey gratitude. The result was lukewarm sincerity that made Sing regret bothering at all.  

Sometimes, it was easier when Eiji was curled in bed all day, often for a week at a time. When the apartment was stale and reeked of unwashed sheets or alcohol, it was easier to face this side of Eiji’s grief. It was the deafening silence of a tomb, but at least it edged closer to acceptance rather than avoidance.  

This side of Eiji was honest. It was darker, more selfish, steeped in pure id rather than Japanese propriety. Eiji’s grief was a great leviathan swimming beneath the depths of the water, its shadow unmistakable even as the surface of the water remained still as glass. Sing had once compared his own mourning to a monster he kept hidden in the shadows, yet it paled in comparison to the creature that stared back at him from behind those doe-like eyes. He found himself unable to meet Eiji’s gaze at times, as he seemed to be staring at Grief rather than Eiji, the latter relegated to far-flung depths of the ocean below.   

This side of Eiji’s grief was a drunken stare tracking Sing’s movements as he cleaned up after him, picking up empty glass bottles or throwing sheets in the washer, opening the windows to the outside. There was an intensity in those eyes that Sing could feel even when he turned his back, a heaviness in it that he couldn’t interpret. 

Tying his lush despair and polite detachment was the silence. When Eiji spoke, his voice had a peculiar rasp in it from being so underused, words slower to come as though he’d forgotten how to use them. It wasn’t just his English - on the phone, his speech was equally rusty, as though his voice were an instrument he’d forgotten how to use.

More than anything, Sing desperately wished that Eiji would just fucking _talk_ to him.  

In a fit of pique, he’d thrown a mug into the sink and pretended not to wince at the shattering sound that followed. Eiji’s spoon had frozen halfway to his lips, though his expression remained damnably calm. His eyes flitted to the sink for a moment, but that was the extent of his reaction at Sing’s outburst.  

“Eiji, I wish you’d just say something. You can’t keep doing this.”  

“Doing what?”  

“Don’t play stupid. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, but your grief is going to eat you alive if you let it. I wish you’d just… cry, do _something_ besides whatever the hell you’re doing now. Slicing up your arms, drinking yourself into oblivion…. none of that is going to make it go away. You have to face it.”  

Eiji’s lips set into a scowl, cheeks pink with an indignant flush as he pulled at his sleeves further down his wrists. Another hairline fracture in the placid mask.  

“I never asked you to babysit me, Sing. If you are here to lecture, leave.”  

Sing ignored the sudden coldness in Eiji’s tone, the way a sliver of ice seemed to carve its way down his spine at the shift in his mood.  

“No can do, Eiji. If I’m gonna be honest… well, I don’t trust you alone right now.”  

The Noh mask slipped a bit further, a small wisp of wrath unfurling from one of the cracks.  

“I was not giving you a choice. Get.  _Out_.”  

“Eiji, what are-” 

“I do not need you using me as some way to ease your own guilt!” This time Eiji spoke it much louder. Though articulated with his normal speaking voice, it sounded thunderous in the silence of the condo.  

For a few moments, the silence stretched as Eiji fixed him with an icy glare, and Sing tried to process Eiji’s words. He was still reeling, heart clenched as though Eiji had just slapped him in the face. He wished it had been a slap, rather than the strategic knife right in the heart.  

“So that’s what you think this is,” Sing finally replied, letting out a mirthless breath of a laugh. “That I’m here…  _every day_ … because I feel _guilty_.”  

As usual, silence was his answer.  

“I could atone for the rest of my life, and that still wouldn’t scratch the surface of it. But at least I’ve fucking accepted it. I’ve owned it, made my peace with it. When I come here every goddamn day, Eiji, I know for a fact that nothing I’ve done will bring Ash back.”  

Sing didn’t miss the way Eiji flinched at the mention of Ash’s name. It sparked something horrifically cruel in him, luring out the dark monster of his own grief as it cried out for relief.  

_I’m hurting, too, you selfish bastard. Why can’t you-_  

“You can’t even hear his name without shutting down, Eiji. He. Is.  _Dead_. You and I both saw them burying his body. We both-” 

“Stop it, Sing.”  

“No, _you_ stop it. You need to stop acting like he’ll just waltz back in if you leave his things untouched, or that-”  

“GET OUT!” A shrill yell, voice cracking at the end. A chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes wide with mania. There was a mug clutched in Eiji’s hand, as though he fully intended to hurl it.  

Another facet of Eiji’s grief - the placid monk, the lumbering despair, and now… madness? Insanity? Sing couldn’t be sure at this point.  

He was so goddamn tired of having to keep track of them all…. no, he was just tired. Period. He was only fourteen and already felt like an old man, picking off decaying pieces of his heart at yet another loved one’s face etched itself into his nightmares.  

_There’s no getting through to him like this._  

“I know how to take a hint,” Sing replied, mirroring Eiji’s own tepid warmth from before. “I gotta make a quick grocery run tomorrow, so I’ll be by a bit later, alright?”  

His reply was the same as before: a silence heavy enough to suffocate them. 

* * *

The next day, Sing stopped by about an hour later than normal - he hoisted the bags on his forearms, making the familiar journey up six floors and down the hallway in a path he could have walked blindfolded.  

When he reached the front door of the condo, dread settled over his bones in a way that made him feel the visceral need to turn on his heel and run.  

_Death_. 

The word sprung to his mind unbidden. The chill settling on his skin was the fog that clung to graveyards, speaking to a primal fear of rot and decay. Goosebumps rose on his arms.  

Unlocking the door with the spare key, Sing walked inside and was greeted with the silence of a tomb. 

“Eiji?”  

He heard a distant clatter coming from the direction of the bathroom, and a soft curse.  

“Eiji, are you in there?”  

“I’m fine, Sing.”  

The tone was that of a panicked child caught in a lie and made the blood in his veins turn to ice. Sing dropped the bags near the front door and strode across the apartment to the bathroom in brisk steps, only slightly startled when the door wasn’t locked as anticipated.  

Eiji was sitting with his back against the bathtub, an open bottle of prescription medication in one hand and a bottle of liquor nestled between his legs. Eiji stared up at Sing with wide eyes, though it was hard to tell if it was anger or terror setting his mouth in such a thin line.  

The evasive tone, an inordinate amount of powerful painkillers, and alcohol to polish it off… Sing felt as if he was about to pass out. His heart beat a tattoo against his rib cage like a terrified bird. Oh god, if he’d been a minute or two later- 

“W-were… were you about to down all that, Eiji?” 

It was all he could to do ask it clinically and subdue the tremor in his voice. If his control frayed even a bit, Sing was certain he’d start sobbing. Handling Eiji right now felt like trying to capture a skittish woodland creature - he was terrified the slightest mistake would drive Eiji to follow through.  

“I… I’m not sure, I just…”  

Eiji’s voice was defeated in a way that made his chest ache. His eyes remained fixed on the tile in front of him, and with cautious motions, Sing got to his knees to look at Eiji properly. To his shock, Eiji’s cheeks were stained with freshly shed tears, and as the silence grew, his breathing punctuated by wet sniffles.  

“It _hurts_ , Sing. All of this… it hurts so much. I just want it to stop... I don’t care what it takes.”  

Eiji’s voice broke towards the end, and Sing felt a fissure of pain in his chest. It was a dangerous splintering, one he absolutely had to ignore right now.  

His eyes burned, but he refused to cry. Not now. Sing risked wrapping his arms around Eiji’s shoulders, patting the boy lightly on the back with one hand while resting the other at the back of his head. He wasn’t sure yet if Eiji was willing to be touched, especially after their spat yesterday.  

A pair of hands grasped desperately at his hoodie, Eiji pressing his face into Sing’s chest as though finally, after this time, he trusted tiny Sing enough to carry the weight that followed. The idea made Sing want to laugh -  he was a pint-sized Atlas, kneecaps cracking under the gravity of Shorter’s legacy, his brother’s sins, the resulting fragments of Eiji’s shattered world squarely upon on his shoulders.  

Something as minor as physical weight paled in comparison to that.  

He dredged the well of his memory, trying to find the comforting words he’d heard from Nadia when his own father had died.  

“It’s okay to cry, Eiji.”  

Eiji lifted his gaze to Sing’s, eyes concerned. His lips trembled, the first dangerous pebbles precluding an avalanche months in the making…. but still, he hesitated.  

“I do not want to be a nuisance.”  

“Oh, screw that, Eiji. You’re hurting.  _Be_ a fucking nuisance if you want.” 

“I’m afraid that once I start, I won’t be able to stop.”  

“So what? Let it out.  _Scream_ if you have to.”  

These words, small as they were, were like a bomb set off in a dam.  

A heartrending wail clawed itself out of Eiji’s throat before he muffled it against Sing’s hoodie, months of mourning pouring out of him as he curled tighter into himself. He could tell from the wet sniffling that Eiji was likely getting snot all over his jacket, but Sing found that he couldn’t be bothered by it. With every sob, every meaningless murmur of Ash’s name, Sing felt as though a piece of that great globe on his shoulders was chipped away, one ounce at a time.  

However, it made it hard for him to remain the grounding presence that he needed to be. Sing bit his lip as Eiji’s weeping imprinted itself into his heart -  _your fault, your fault_ \- and willed himself to remain stoic. He settled for rubbing soothing circles along Eiji’s back, though he found it hard to swallow around the lump in his throat.  

He felt a hand on his cheek, wiping away a rogue tear that had apparently escaped despite his best efforts.  

Glancing down, Sing saw that Eiji fixed him with a watery smile - not a Noh mask, but something fragile. Something genuine. It was the first he’d seen Eiji, not just Grief, in what felt like years.  

“You’re allowed to cry, Sing. I know you miss him, too.”  

“Goddammit, I-” 

Atlas’s knees finally gave out, and in his stead, just a Chinese gutter punk crumbling into tears. 


End file.
